Monday Morning Coming Down

It's Depressing

So Very Cheney
Our Vice President (In Charge of Evil) has no respect for the public he claims to serve.

Seriously. He's willing to say so.

Informed during a Good Morning America interview broadcast Wednesday that two-thirds of Americans now think the war was not worth fighting, Cheney said: "So?"

"So you don't care what the American people think?" ABC's Martha Raddatz asked.

He added: "I think we cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations of the public opinion polls. There has in fact been fundamental change and transformation and improvement for the better. That's a huge accomplishment."

Cheney added that the economy was going through a "rough patch, there's no question about it."

The White House later released a transcript which shows that Cheney's first response wasn't "so" as ABC presented on its broadcast.

When first informed by Raddatz that "two-thirds of Americans say [the Iraq war] was not worth fighting," the vice president responded, "They ought to go spend time, like you and I have, Martha. You know what's been happening in Iraq. You've been there as much as anybody. There has, in fact, been fundamental change and transformation, and improvement for the better. I think even you would admit that."

They think the second quote makes them look better. He's saying that his critics should have to go to Iraq, a place where the sewage runs in the streets and five car bombs go off a day in public.

He's either insane or a complete sociopath, or both.

Source: Raw Story

Dear Abby is a Bitch
So Dear Abby answered a strange reader's letter asking about how to deal with his wife's rape by one of his brothers by, err, calling the wife a lying slut. More or less.

But when you decided to forego any sort of censure of the offending brothers and get straight to your real suspicion about what happened: that the wife is a lying slut who needs an AIDS test and a strict talking-to. "Please do not accept as gospel that your wife didn't have an inkling that it wasn't you," you wrote. "It's time to have a serious chat with your wife and get chapter and verse on what happened that night."

It's not like advice columnists have an obligation to print every letter they get; "Dear Abby" thought this was a response worth publishing to millions of idiot readers.

People wonder why 90% of rapes go unreported; it's due in no small part to people like Abby here. Jerk-ass.

Source: Jezebel

I Hate the South
They apparently think cars are toys in South Carolina. Or to be precise, the cops think cars are toys, and suspects are targets.

Federal authorities are looking into possible civil rights violations following the release of videos showing misconduct by South Carolina State Highway Patrol troopers.

The controversy began a month ago, when the South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus came forward with a video from 2004 in which a trooper told a suspect, ""You better run, n**, because I'm fixin' to kill you."

Now a freedom of information request has produced video from dashboard cameras showing two incidents in which troopers used their patrol cars to deliberately ram into suspects fleeing on foot. Both those suspects were also black.

In one video, a patrol car chases a man through the parking lot of an apartment complex, then follows him between buildings and across footpaths and lawns where children are playing before running into him.

In the other, a patrol car hits a suspect as he tries to cross in front of it on a back road. The man flips over the side of the car and then off the road. "Hey, I nailed the fuck out of him," the trooper proclaims. "He went flying up in the air. ... I was trying to hit him."

Both officers remained on duty. The one who boasted of deliberately hitting the suspect was given a three day suspension. The other officer, who admitted to poor judgment but said he hit the man accidentally, received only a reprimand.

And people wonder why I say we should write off, then wall off, the South.

They don't deserve the fruits of our civilization. They can't even use cars without turning them into a form of sick racist attack.

Source: Raw Story

ORLY, O'Reilly?
(ORLY == Oh Really in net-speak)

So Bill-O is up to his usual hijinks, trying to literally dispose of all of his enemies.

Summary: On his radio program, Bill O'Reilly called the "people" at Media Matters for America "the worst Americans in the country" and stated, "If I could, I would deport them." O'Reilly also asserted: "But this Media Matters, this disgusting, despicable, far-left website, they do it all the time. And MoveOn and all these people, that's what they do. They disagree with you, and they brand you a racist."

Hey O'Reilly; fuck you. How dare you call for the deportation of American citizens who disagree with you? Racist scumbag thug. Utterly disgusting.

If anyone's getting deported, it should be him, the creepy sexual deviant.

Source: Media Matters

Shock and Awe
Here we go again. Sigh.

Lamperd, a "firearm training system" company, has patented a bracelet that delivers debilitating shocks when remotely triggered. Their killer app for this is aviation safety: they're proposing that the TSA could force everyone who flies to wear one of these and then flight-attendants could zap us into a stupor if we turn out to be Al Quaeda.

That's right; they want to force everyone on a flight to wear a shock-collar, like a damned aggressive dog.

Fat chance. I'd love to see them try it though; we'd have a working mass transit train system six months after the first flight of these monstrous devices.

Source: Boing Boing

Ashes, Ashes...
Gee, yet another faulty bridge almost ready to collapse at rush hour. Big surprise.

CHICAGO — A 51-year-old steel truss bridge over the Mississippi River in St. Cloud, Minn., was abruptly shut down on Thursday after inspectors found that its gusset places were bending — a problem similar to the one believed to have critically weakened the Interstate 35W bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis in August.

Meanwhile, it looks like the Bush controlled NTSB is trying to whitewash this obviously serial neglect in Minnesota for their friend, the Republican governor.

Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau was removed from her post as transportation commissioner last month after years of concern about the department’s performance, but also because of the acute negative attention she received in the aftermath of the collapse. Democratic legislators criticized Ms. Molnau, a Republican, for ineffective leadership.

They have also tried to lay responsibility for the collapse on Mr. Pawlenty, another Republican, because he vetoed a tax increase shortly before the collapse. That money would have been used for highway repairs.

The National Transportation Safety Board has not yet established the overall cause of the collapse in Minneapolis, which killed 13 people and injured 145 when cars plunged into the Mississippi River.

But earlier this week, the board said the bridge was stressed after workers had put 99 tons of sand on the roadway directly over two of the bridge’s weakest points. Stress at one of the two weakest points was 83 percent more than the bridge could have handled, according to an interim report released earlier by the Federal Highway Administration.

Yeah. Because it really turned out to be an isolated incident... oh wait, no, not so much.

Jerks.

Source: The New York Times

Yet More Heartland Values
In this case, where a family tortured a woman to death over several weeks with BB guns and hot glue.

Banished to the basement, the 29-year-old mother with a childlike mind and another baby on the way had little more than a thin rug and a mattress to call her own on the chilly concrete floor.

Dorothy Dixon ate what she could forage from the refrigerator upstairs, where housemates used her for target practice with BBs, burned her with a glue gun and doused her with scalding liquid that peeled away her skin.

They torched what few clothes she had, so she walked around naked. They often pummeled her with an aluminum bat or metal handle.

Dixon — six months pregnant — died after weeks of abuse. Police have charged two adults, three teenagers and a 12-year-old boy with murder in the case that has repulsed many in this Mississippi River town.

Once again, never let anyone tell you how wholesome and wonderful the flyover states are without taking a grain of salt. Bible-thumping doesn't make a society moral. In my experience, it just makes it cruel.

Source: Raw Story

Pope Pokes Muslim Community With Stick
Hardly an uncommon occurrence these days.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict led the world's Catholics into Easter on Saturday at a Vatican service where he baptized a Muslim-born convert who is one of Italy's most famous and controversial journalists.

...

One of the seven adults he baptized on Saturday night was Magdi Allam, 55, an Egyptian-born journalist who, as deputy director of the leading newspaper Corriere della Sera, is one of Italy's best-known intellectuals.

Allam, a fierce critic of Islamic extremism and a strong supporter of Israel, is protected by a police escort because of threats he has received.

...

Allam defended the pope in 2006 when the pontiff made a speech in Regensburg, Germany, that many Muslims perceived as depicting Islam as a violent faith.

The Vatican statement announcing Allam was joining Catholicism said all newcomers were "equally important before God's love and welcome in the community of the Church."

Allam, who has been living in Italy for 35 years, has said he was never a very devout Muslim. Still, his conversion to Christianity came as a surprise.

"What amazes me is the high profile the Vatican has given this conversion," Yaha Sergio Yahe Pallavicini, vice-president of the Italian Islamic Religious Community, told Reuters.

Defending the pope when nobody else will, wow. He really would make a great Catholic in the current power structure. Maybe he can get on the fast track to being a Bishop.

Source: Raw Story

Dana, Dana, Dana
For a bit of lighter news, here's Dana Peroxide, defending El Presidente's idiot position that if we leave Iraq, Al-Queda, not Al-Queda in Iraq, the spinoff, but the actual Al-Queda, will conquer the entire country and start selling Iraqi oil on the global market.

Reeeeeeeeeeeally.

Me: The President warned of the danger that al Qaeda could gain access to Iraq's oil resources. But I don't understand how a fragmented, clandestine, non-Iraqi terrorist organization could produce and sell Iraqi oil on the global market, especially when the majority of Iraqis have turned against al Qaeda. Could you describe a plausible scenario?

Dana: The purpose of what the President said is that al Qaeda should not be allowed to have safe haven in Iraq and take over --

Me: How can they take over Iraq's oil reserves?

Dana: Well, if we were to leave we would certainly ensue chaos and not be able to -- if we were to leave too soon, it would certainly be chaos and it would be terrible for not only the innocent Iraqis, but the entire region and, in fact, our own national security. That's what the President --

Me: So the Iraqis would let a foreign terrorist organization take over their oil?

Dana: You're missing the point, and I think that you should go back and read --

Me: No, I --

Dana: Yes, actually, I think you are missing the point. And I call on you because I see what you write about how you come here and you really want to have questions asked. And I'm calling on you and I'm providing it to you, but I suggest that you read the President's speech and read it in context, because that's -- what you're suggesting is not what the President said.

Me: That's what he said.

Indeed it is.

It all started when I came across the following line in the President's Iraq War Birthday speech:

"An emboldened al Qaeda with access to Iraq's oil resources could pursue its ambitions to acquire weapons of mass destruction to attack America and other free nations."

Check that out. Bush thinks a small cadre of foreign terrorists will conquer Iraq, rebuild its infrastructure, government, export facilities, quell sectarian unrest and start selling their oil, all of which we have been unable to do with 140,000 US troops.

Wow, sounds efficient. Maybe we should let them have a crack at it!

Source: Raw Story

Another Edition of Heartland Values

Go Indiana!

Segregationist Center
So it turns out that one of IU's buildings is named after a staunch segregationist and bigot, one Ora Wildermuth.

I bet you’ve passed it a few hundred times, maybe more.

It is a sign, small and simple. White words wrap around a dull maroon rectangle with the declaration: Ora L. Wildermuth Intramural Center.

This sign, which stands outside of the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation building, represents the man, and the man represents the institution.

So who is the man?

One thing Judge Ora Leonard Wildermuth advocated would have made George Wallace proud. For Wildermuth, it was segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever. He put it in his own words on Nov. 19, 1945, in a letter to IU comptroller Ward G. Biddle. Wildermuth, then-president of the IU board of trustees, wrote, “I am and shall always remain absolutely and utterly opposed to social intermingling of the colored race with the white. I belong to the white race and shall remain loyal to it. It always has been the dominant and leading race.”

Ooh yeah, that's the old time white power schtick. You can't get hate like that anymore.

A bit of an irony for those of us who know Indiana these days too:

Wildermuth was one of the first citizens of Gary when he arrived there in 1906. He served as Gary’s first schoolteacher, librarian and municipal judge.

For those of you outside the state, Gary is a very heavily black majority city... with one of the highest per capita levels of violence in the country. Being a white supremacist from Gary these days would buy you a one way ticket to Hell on the Express train.

But back to the asshole.

From 1938 to1949, Wildermuth was president of the IU board of trustees. When the school sought funds, the trustees sought a reason. Both reason and racism clashed in the summer of 1948 when IU President Herman B Wells sent out a correspondence to the homes of each board member. Wells specifically requested from the trustee president to spend $60,000 to build new dormitories for the “colored housing situation.”

Wildermuth responded to Wells by writing, “So few of them succeed and the average of the race as to intelligence, economic status and industry is so far below the white average that it seems to me futile to build up hope for a great future.”

Much like a white-sheet clad Energizer Bunny, he kept going and going and going!

So, ok, the man was clearly a bigot, and having a campus building named after him is a disgrace. Right?

We'll surely be seeing some swift action on this point too, right?

When former IU President Adam Herbert discovered last April that a campus building bears the name of a known segregationist, he vowed to take speedy action. Almost a year later, with Herbert out of office, the team of faculty and administrators responsible for resolving the issue is still requesting more time.

...

Terry Clapacs, University vice president and chief administrative officer, heads the committee. He said a decision could not be reached last week because the committee members “all wanted to do more individual research.”

“There are a lot of opinions,” Clapacs said. “There were 17 of us that met, and everybody had something to say about it, so it was a very interesting conversation.”

The way I see it, you have basically two options, Clapacs, you moron. Either take his name off the building, or put on the white sheets yourself.

That's about the size of it.

Source: The Indiana Daily Student (original column) (status article)

Midwestern Poison
So as it turns out, Indiana found a way to enrich itself at the trough of Hurricane Katrina: selling the formaldehyde soaked trailers to FEMA.

Northern Indiana’s recreational vehicle industry is at the center of a federal inquiry into toxic air found in emergency trailers supplied to victims left homeless in 2005 by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Monday that it measured the highest levels of formaldehyde in emergency trailers made by three Indiana firms: Gulf Stream Coach, Inc., the largest privately held RV maker in the U.S., based in Nappanee; Pilgrim International, Inc., based in Middlebury; and Keystone R.V. Co., based in Goshen.

...

Officials at plywood industry trade groups in the United States and Canada suggest improperly sealed plywood imported from China might be the culprit. The plywood would have been used to make cabinets and build the structure of the trailers.

American and Canadian plywood makers say they commonly use phenol formaldehyde to make both interior and exterior plywood. The phenol variety’s tight bonding characteristics make it impervious to water, while the other variety, known as urea formaldehyde, can allow gas to escape if it is not sealed properly, said Paul Jaehrlich, technical services director of the Canadian Plywood Association.

China too! We should have known.

So basically, they cut corners (and padded their profit) by using cheap Chinese plywood. What harm could that possibly cause?

The results showed 121 Gulf Stream trailers tested had an average formaldehyde level of 0.103 parts per million, 39 Pilgrim units tested had an average of 0.108 parts per million and 38 Keystone units tested had an average of 0.102 parts per million.

The average exposure level for typical indoor air is 0.01 to 0.03 parts per million.

...

What is Formaldehyde?
It is a colorless gas emitted from many construction materials and can cause breathing problems, itchy eyes and rashes. The gas is also a suspected carcinogen.

Oh, right. It could KILL PEOPLE.

Selfish, arrogant, greedy, grasping pricks.

Another lesson in the true meaning of 'Heartland Values'

Source: The Indianapolis Star

Republican Values

Not Just Greed

Bill Orly
So Bill-O, fresh off of threatening to lead a lynch mob against Michelle Obama if there was 'evidence', is now comparing Arianna Huffington, Republican Apostate, to... Hitler. Hitler and the KKK.

Summary: While discussing comments posted to an item on The Huffington Post, Bill O'Reilly said of the website's founder, "Arianna Huffington, I have no respect for that woman. I think that she is hurting the country." O'Reilly asked: "[W]hat's the difference between the Ku Klux Klan and Arianna Huffington?" and later stated: "I don't see any difference between Huffington and the Nazis."

This from the man who's amazed black people can eat at a restaurant without screaming obscenities, and who wants to lead an ideological purge against uppity black women.

Riiiight.

Source: Media Matters

Republicans Are Bad For Children
...and other living things.

Today, the Children’s Defense Fund Action Council released its 2007 Nonpartisan Congressional Scorecard. CDF reports some positive news, particularly that average scores for members of Congress “improved from the previous three years with more Members scoring 100 percent than in 2004, 2005 or 2006.”

Many, however, did not fare so well. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) received a 10 percent rating — the worst in the U.S. Senate.

Oops.

Source: Think Progress

Another Plagiarist
Right-wingers do love to steal other peoples' ideas, don't they?

The latest huckster is Tim Goeglein, a top White House staffer, who also writes a column for a newspaper. Naturally, he's also the liaison to their faith-based theocracy program.

Also, by 'writes', I mean, of course, 'steals'.

WASHINGTON - A Fort Wayne native and White House official acknowledged Friday he copied large portions of an essay that appeared in a Dartmouth College publication and presented them as his own in a News-Sentinel column.


"It is true," Tim Goeglein wrote to The Journal Gazette in an e-mail. "I am entirely at fault. It was wrong of me. There are no excuses."


He said he wrote to the author of the essay, Jeffrey Hart "to apologize, and do so categorically and without exception."


Nancy Nall, a former News-Sentinel columnist who writes a blog from her home in Michigan, detailed the nearly word-for-word similarities of eight paragraphs of Goeglein's 16-pargraph essay about college education, which appeared in the News-Sentinel on Thursday, and Hart's column, which was written about a decade ago.

...

Goeglein has worked in the Bush White House since 2001 as the Bush administration's liaison to religious organizations. He formerly worked for then-Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind.

Ahh, more of those famous Heartland Values.

This is hardly the first time either. From the Post, regarding the efforts of Nall and her readers to see how far back this goes:

Since then, one of her readers found passages in Goeglein's Nov. 5 column about Hoagy Carmichael that appears lifted from a Jonathan Yardley essay published in The Washington Post on Sept. 3.

Another reader found Goeglein's July 23 column on John Wayne's centenary containing passages from an article by Bruce Bennett published in the New York Sun on June 20. That same reader then found similarities between Goeglein's July 5 column and an article by Robert R. Reilly published in Crisis Magazine on June 13.

Wowie-wow-wow.

Sources: The Washington Post
Nancy Nall.com
Journal Gazette

Good Fences and All That
So the much-vaunted 'Border Fence' that Bush was pushing turns out to have gone completely to custard.

Actually it's so bad, it probably started out that way.

GAO investigators said that Boeing's software could not process large amounts of sensor data. The resulting delays made it hard for operators in a Tucson command center 65 miles to the north to lock cameras on targets. Radar systems were also triggered inadvertently by rain and other environmental factors. Cameras had trouble resolving images at five kilometers when they were expected to work at twice that distance, Stana said.

...

A nongovernment source familiar with the project said that the Bush administration's push to speed the project during last year's immigration debate led Boeing to deploy equipment without enough testing or consultation.

So we have an intruder alarm system that works at half the distance intended, meaning huge gaps, and triggers false positives whenever it rains.

Wonderful! This fence should help ensure that more illegal immigrants sneak into the country.

That will mean more delicious tacos for me. Everybody wins.

Source: The Washington Post

Finally for Budding Fascists
A Playmobil Security Checkpoint!

No, really.

The comments at Amazon are classic.

Educational and Fun!, February 27, 2008 By Zampano (New York City) - See all my reviews

Durability: Fun: Educational:
Thank you Playmobil for allowing me to teach my 5-year old the importance of recognizing what a failing bureaucracy in a ever growing fascist state looks like. Sometimes it's a hard lesson for kids to learn because not all pigs carry billy clubs and wear body armor. I applaud the people who created this toy for finally being hip to our changing times. Little children need to be aware that not all smiling faces and uniforms are friendly. I noticed that my child is now more interested in current events. Just the other day he asked me why we had to forfeit so much of our liberties and personal freedoms and I had to answer "well, it's because the terrorists have already won". Yes, they have won.

I also highly recommend the Playmobil "farm fencing" so you can take your escorted airline passenger away and fence him behind bars as if he were in Guantanamo Bay.

Republican Values

Vicious Little Children

Contempt
Today the House of Representatives voted to hold two Bush aides in Contempt of Congress for refusing to testify about the Attorney General scandal.

Democrats passed contempt of Congress citations against two Bush administration figures Thursday after the charges had spent months in limbo.

They do so on the basis of executive privilege, despite Bush having not claimed said privilege to Congress.

"This is not a confrontation we have sought, and is one we are still hoping to avoid," Rep. John Conyers, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said earlier Thursday. "However, I believe on the merits our case is quite strong. Unlike other disputes involving executive privilege, the President has never personally asserted privilege, the Committee has never been given a privilege log, and there is no indication the President was ever personally involved in the termination decisions."

Michael Mukasey has already indicated that he will refuse to do his job and prosecute the contempt citations, because Bush told his minions to do it, and that makes it ok. If Bush told them to fillet small children and serve them tartare, I guess that would be ok as well.

Meanwhile, House Republicans staged a series of disruptive protests designed to shield their junta from embarassment, if not (likely any) legal jeopardy.

House Republicans staged a walk-out Thursday afternoon to protest the contempt vote and the failure by the chamber's majority members to bow to President Bush's demands on a controversial spying law.

The worst point in the day came when the GOP caucus stooped so low as to interrupt the memorial service for Representative Tom Lantos, a Holocaust survivor and long-time Congressman from California, to force the Dems to come running back to the House floor for a vote. Absolutely disgusting.

Sources: Raw Story
Americablog

Transgender Issues
Man those Republicans are insecure, aren't they? So insecure in fact that they have to viciously attack anyone who makes them feel 'weird'. The kind of 'weird', as Stephen Colbert put it, when someone disagrees with you about how to use their genitals.

Which is the kind of thing that only keeps you awake at night if you were obsessed with their genitals to begin with, as many Republicans seem to be. Then they turn out to be having cybersex with underage pages, or hanging out in bathrooms at the airport, and it all starts to make sense.

At any rate, today we have Fox News showing off their usual standards of excellence by attacking Transgendered people. In one case, a child. But first, here's your usual Fall of Rome bile from Laura Ingraham.

CODEPINK peace activist Medea Benjamin and pundit Laura Ingraham square off over a proposal to close down a Marines recruiting office.

The ballot initiative, which has already prompted retaliatory action in Washington, would ask the citizens of Berkeley, California whether or not to allow the Marines to continue to recruit within city limits.

Ingraham uses Benjamin's transgender status to counter such a proposal, suggesting that Americans are more accepting of war than they are of an upcoming transgender conference.

"A transgender conference is not killing people," Benjamin responds.

"Just killing the culture, maybe," Ingraham rebuts.

Naturally, this was on the O'Reilly Factor.

What kind of 'culture' is Laura referring to here, anyway? The Conservative 'culture'?

Is it really that easy to wipe it out? Hold some transgender conferences?

Honestly? Huh.

Can I host one? Please?

Source: Page One Q

Transgender Issues Cont.
I'm putting this one under a separate headline, because it really deserves its own space. Fox News Neil Cavuto, who really ought to have an illustration beside 'weasel' in the dictionary, went on a tear today about the news that a second grade kid with gender dysphoria (the clinical term for being transgendered) will be accomodated by their grade school.

Yes, this is the sort of thing that gets Cavuto frothing with rage: when a school accomodates a child with special and diagnosed medical or psychological needs.

In two clips, broadcast on February 12 and 13, Fox News' Neil Cavuto expresses his opinion, in response to one Colorado school's move to accommodate a transgender second grader, saying that the situation is robbing the students of their childhood at taxpayer expense.

"Can we just respect childhood enough not to put them through this nonsense at this age?" he asks.

Child psychologist Jeffrey Gardere calls for more schools to be sensitive to the needs of children with gender dysphoria, but Cavuto disagrees that such accommodations should be made in the sight of children as young as the Colorado student; he feels that they are being made more at the expense of the majority of students, rather than for the equal benefit of the minority.

"What we're finding out," contends Gardere, "is that these kids get these gender dysphoria issues as young as four, five, six years old; they believe that they were born into the wrong body."

"We live in a country where majority rules," counters Cavuto. He worries about what parents of the "other 99%" are going to have to tell their kids about, as he calls them, "Johnny who wants to be Jenna."

"I think many kids can grow from knowing that there are children who lead a different lifestyle, who have these psychological and physiological issues," says Gardere.

"You are robbing kids of their childhood," says Cavuto back to Gardere, "and forcing me as a dad to talk to my sons, sit them down and say, 'All right, now. Some boys like having that penis, now others don't.' And it's weird, doctor."

What's really weird is how you think an obscure news story 'forces' you to talk about penises with your kids, Neil.

Maybe you were just, err, looking for a reason? Just guessing here.

After just being FORCED to talk to his kids about something he clearly doesn't understand in the least, Cavuto responds by soliciting, and then airing, viewer mail attacking a SECOND GRADE STUDENT.

Wednesday's segment includes viewer mail, largely mocking the student. Cavuto calls the situation "stupidity" and "too much damn tolerance," repeating his disagreement with the notion that the majority have to "bend over backwards" for their classmate.

I agree. We have too much damn tolerance. For assholes like Neil Cavuto, that is.

Source: Page One Q

Schlussel
Debbie Schlussel is a real class act, I'll tell you that much.

Summary: In an entry on her website, Debbie Schlussel posted "Valentines," in the form of candy hearts, about Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. The hearts for Obama were black instead of the usual pastel colors and referenced widely debunked allegations that Obama is, or has been, a Muslim. A number of the candy hearts Schlussel posted for Clinton referenced David Shuster's remark, "But doesn't it seem like Chelsea's sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?"

Ha ha ha! Obama's black! We'll make him deny being a Muslim, like it's any different from being a Christian in any substantive way! Hillary's a pimp! Hilarious!

What a tool.

Source: Media Matters

Fear the Press
Dana Perino (Peroxide) is showing her usual high caliber gutlessness, refusing to call on a reporter after they asked one too many probing questions about her boss's little adventure in the desert.

I didn't think the question I asked Tony Fratto on January 17 was that outrageous. It merely questioned the huge discrepancy between President Bush's year-ago description of the Iraqi government's domestic security "plan," and Iraqi officals' recent statements about that "plan." But evidently someone in the White House didn't like the question, because since that date, Press Secretary Dana Perino has repeatedly ignored my attempts to ask questions during the daily briefings.

A press secretary who's completely unable to handle the press; another incompetent Republican hire.

Wow. What a surprise.

Source: Raw Story

2008: A Good Year for Whine
Virginia Republicans are mad, or were (sorry, slow at clearing out the clutter), at the idea that, gasp, they might have to support the Republican nominee, or, you know, resign from the party!

Members of the Republican Party in Loudoun County, Viriginia met last week, and took up a variety of business, including a requirement that members of the party's committee support all Republican candidates. With McCain looking set to march away with the nomination, some party members objected.

"I am really concerned that John McCain is going to become the nominee," Erika Jacobson of the newspaper Leesburg Today reported committee member Susan Falknor saying. "He has been against a lot of conservative values."

Look folks. You can vote for whoever you want. That's your right. But the GOP is a private organization; they can enforce whatever silly rules they want, within what few laws apply, like any other elitist club.

Man, I can't believe I just defended the GOP. I feel so dirty.

Source: Raw Story

Gibson the Alcoholic Anti-Semite
So Mel Gibson, famed anti-semite and creator of the submoronic Passion of the Christ (where for 'authenticity' he had everyone speaking a form of Latin that wouldn't exist for at least a thousand years... moron) is out of his court ordered supervision after the drunken tirade that landed him in the news, his career in the toilet, and his future Oscar chancers forever out of reach.

A California judge congratulated star actor-director Mel Gibson for fulfilling the conditions of his probation, a year and a half after he was arrested for drunk-driving, when he blurted out anti-Semitic remarks.

...

At the time of his arrest Gibson -- who was criticized for anti-Semitic portrayals in his 2004 Biblical film "The Passion of the Christ" -- swore at the officer who stopped him, cursing Jews and saying: "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."

He later asked forgiveness, explaining that he had battled with alcoholism his whole life.

Yes, it was the BOOZE that made him a raging bigot. Not his lunatic fringe religious beliefs... Riiight.

Source: Raw Story

Stuff We Have to Ban Because They Just Can't Keep Their Hands Off
So Texas' law banning various sex toys from sale has been overturned by a federal court, mercifully relieving the world of the possibility of an endless series of CourtTV appearances by embarassed Texans whose closets got raided by Vice.

Thank the Lord.

FORT WORTH, Texas — A federal appeals court has overturned a Texas statute outlawing sex toy sales, leaving Alabama as the state with the strictest ban on such devices.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Texas law making it illegal to sell or promote obscene devices, punishable by up to two years in jail, violated the Constitution's 14th Amendment on the right to privacy.

Companies that own Dreamer's and Le Rouge Boutique, which sell the devices in its Austin stores, and the retail distributor Adam & Eve, sued in Austin federal court in 2004 over the constitutionality of the law. They appealed after a federal judge dismissed the suit and said the constitution did not protect their right to publicly promote such devices.

In its decision Tuesday, the appeals court cited Lawrence and Garner v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 opinion that struck down bans on consensual sex between gay couples.

Ahh, yet again, Progress comes to the South at the end of a pen.

I'm fine with doing it at the end of a sword, if that's what they'd prefer, though.

Source: Houston Chronicle

Torturers
Torturers abound in the United States government, our response to gruesome injustice is further gruesome injustice.

The most famous journalist you may never have heard of is Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera cameraman who is on a hunger strike to protest abuse during more than six years in a Kafkaesque prison system.

Mr. Hajj’s fortitude has turned him into a household name in the Arab world, and his story is sowing anger at the authorities holding him without trial.

That’s us. Mr. Hajj is one of our forgotten prisoners in Guantánamo Bay.

Sigh. We're as low as we can go without finding a shovel.

There are the usual particularly gruesome details at the site, but I'm tired of pasting that stuff here.

Source: Firedoglake

Esser Ethics
An old ethics 'complaint' against Luke Esser, the man who cheated Huckabee out of the Washington GOP Primary, shows that people, glass houses, yadda yadda yadda.

Source: Horsesass.org

Private Stasi
Who says the Bush administration has a completely naive grasp of history? Bush has apparently decided to revive that most beloved secret police organization from East Germany, the Stasi!

"At its most basic level, InfraGard is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the private sector," the InfraGard website states. "InfraGard chapters are geographically linked with FBI Field Office territories."

In November 2001, InfraGard had around 1,700 members. As of late January, InfraGard had 23,682 members, according to its website, www.infragard.net, which adds that "350 of our nation's Fortune 500 have a representative in InfraGard."To join, each person must be sponsored by "an existing InfraGard member, chapter, or partner organization." The FBI then vets the applicant. On the application form, prospective members are asked which aspect of the critical infrastructure their organization deals with. These include: agriculture, banking and finance, the chemical industry, defense, energy, food, information and telecommunications, law enforcement, public health, and transportation.

Ahh, networks of secret informants, whatever could go wrong?

Oh, riiight.

One business owner in the United States tells me that InfraGard members are being advised on how to prepare for a martial law situation -- and what their role might be. He showed me his InfraGard card, with his name and e-mail address on the front, along with the InfraGard logo and its slogan, "Partnership for Protection." On the back of the card were the emergency numbers that Schneck mentioned.

This business owner says he attended a small InfraGard meeting where agents of the FBI and Homeland Security discussed in astonishing detail what InfraGard members may be called upon to do.

"The meeting started off innocuously enough, with the speakers talking about corporate espionage," he says. "From there, it just progressed. All of a sudden we were knee deep in what was expected of us when martial law is declared. We were expected to share all our resources, but in return we'd be given specific benefits." These included, he says, the ability to travel in restricted areas and to get people out. But that's not all.

"Then they said when -- not if -- martial law is declared, it was our responsibility to protect our portion of the infrastructure, and if we had to use deadly force to protect it, we couldn't be prosecuted," he says.

And people thought it was paranoid to worry about Bush declaring martial law and seizing power in a coup.

Sigh.

Source: Hullabaloo (Digby)

I Survived the LSAT

But At What Cost?

Where the White Women At?
It's a question on Bill Kristol's mind, it seems.

BILL KRISTOL: Look, the only people for Hillary Clinton are the Democratic establishment and white women. The Democratic establishment -- it would be crazy for the Democratic Party to follow an establishment that's led it to defeat year after year. White women are a problem, that's, you know -- we all live with that.

[laughter]

JUAN WILLIAMS (National Public Radio correspondent and Fox News contributor): Not me!

HUME: Bill, for the record, I like white women.

KRISTOL: I know, I shouldn't have said that.

Probably not, no. Also, what's up with Juan Williams here?

*shrug*

Conservatives are weird.

Source: Media Matters

Neil Boortz, Total Ass
Neil Boorz, right-wing radio pundit and general waste of skin, has decided that it's time to reveal how he really feels about Katrina refugees.

Summary: On his nationally syndicated radio show, Neal Boortz made disparaging remarks about Hurricane Katrina victims, stating, "When these Katrina so-called refugees were scattered about the country, it was just a glorified episode of putting out the garbage." Boortz also described New Orleans as "a city of parasites, a city of people who could not and had no desire to fend for themselves."

Neil, please, go fuck yourself. Seriously. Racist, classist fuckwit.

Offhand I'd say it's hard to fend for yourself when your entire city is underwater due to gross federal negligence, there's no drinking water, no electricity, no security, bodies floating past what's left of you home and none of those federal agencies you pay taxes to every year show up to help or give a damn. For years afterward, either.

But why bother responding to this guy? He's a moron. He always will be a moron. There's no helping someone this monumentally, viciously stupid.

Source: Media Matters

Rise of the HPV Vaccine
A new study shows that the Human papillomavirus, which causes cervical cancer in women, also causes throat cancer in men, at a far higher rate than previously speculated.

I imagine that the religious right, who vehemently opposed the vaccine being given to preteen girls, will now absolutely CLAMOR that it be given to their boys.

Those arguments about preventing disease encouraging sex won't hold up in their tiny minds when it's their precious heirs at risk, after all. Women are just chattal; you can always buy more.

Source: The Associated Press

Chart of the Datasphere
Well, the (underwater) internet part of it, at any rate. Fascinating stuff. Largely the internet flows where you'd expect it to, with white developed areas receiving by far the hugest share, but things do stand out. Australia, for instance, has little connectivity, though some decent bandwidth (and more is planned). Brazil has a lot of undersea connections, distributed over different areas, so even if they had a similar cabling accident to the one that took out much of the Middle East's bandwidth this week, BRASIL!!! would still flood across the interwebs in rainbow colors.

Such a heartwarming thought.

The accident in question was caused by a ship that tried to put down anchor off the coast of Egypt during bad weather. Understandable thing to do. Unfortunately, said anchor snagged something other than rocks... two very, very pricey ocean-floor fiber optic cables.

According to reports, the internet blackout, which has left 75 million people with only limited access, was caused by a ship that tried to moor off the coast of Egypt in bad weather on Wednesday. Since then phone and internet traffic has been severely reduced across a huge swath of the region, slashed by as much as 70% in countries including India, Egypt and Dubai.

Ooopsies.

Source: The Guardian
For nifty chart

Bill-O
For those who didn't see it on Olbermann (you know who you are), Bill O'Reilly's recent campaign against John Edwards for daring to note that a lot of veterans are homeless has culminated in a protest against him by the very homeless veterans he insisted didn't exist, or only existed because they were are all crazy and on drugs.

Carol Gardener, executive director of Fitzgerald House, which provides transitional housing and job placement assistance to homeless veterans, recently appeared at News Corporation headquarters to deliver a petition to FOX News mainstay and The O'Reilly Factor host Bill O'Reilly.

The petition, signed by 17,000 people, demands an apology from O'Reilly over a claim he made that there are no homeless veterans.

"The only thing sleeping under a bridge is that guy's brain," O'Reilly quipped during his January 4 broadcast, referring to part of a speech that former senator and presidential candidate John Edwards (D-NC) gave, dropping a figure of 200,000 veterans sleeping "under bridges and on grates." (The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates 195,000.)

O'Reilly repeatedly joked about homeless veterans, insisting that, even if there was such a problem, there "aren't that many."

Worst...Person....In the World!!! (sorry Keith)

Source: Raw Story

Are All Conservatives Perverts?

Seriously, I Think It's Time We Asked

A while back you may have heard about a company, Clean Flix, that was providing a way to censor Hollywood movies for religious families that were both too lazy to read books instead and too prudish to stand a bare breast or gory scene.

Well, see, funny thing. The directors and Hollywood hated someone selling their stuff, repurposed, and sued that company out of existence for commercially infringing their IP.

Now though, it seems there was something more going on than just selling bible thumpers movies without the swear words:

Well, cover your eyes for this story. Clean Flix founder Daniel Thompson has just been arrested and is accused of having sex with underaged girls. And according to the Salt Lake Tribune, the "booking documents state Thompson told the 14-year-olds that his film sanitizing business was a cover for a pornography studio." Police found a "large quantity" of porno movies inside the business, "along with a keg of beer, painkillers and two cameras hooked up to a television." Thompson has been released after posting $30,000 bail.

Yep, you read that correctly. The service was a front for a child molesting pornographer conman.

Honestly. Is there a single conservative in America that isn't doing something disgusting and unseemly?

Can we locate one for the zoo exhibit at least?

Source: The Hollywood Reporter ESQ

I Hate You Obama People

Seriously, what is it about the guy you love so much? The emphasis on phoney 'bipartisanship'? The milquetoast political positions? The lack of any relevant experience? His reliance on Republican talking points? His self-importance?

You were right there, you ignorant cow-tippers. You had the chance to vote Dodd, or more realistically Edwards, and you went with Obama. Sickening.

Oh yeah. As expected, Republicans chose Huckabee. Snore. Let's see how fast he can wrap up this nomination so we can get to exploring just how crazy he is.

Then we can move on and hopefully ditch these thumb-up-their-butt Midwestern tools and their antiquated, nonsensical, anti-democratic nomination process that has such a grotesquely unfair and disproportionate influence on national politics. I'm so sick to death of hearing about how 'informed' these corn-husking backwoods hicks are; how useful it is to have our national presidential candidates parade in front of 6/100ths of 1 percent of America, pretending to care about their coffee and their grocery stores and their endless farm subsidies, only to fly out of the state and avoid it for 3 years THE NIGHT THE FRIKKIN RESULTS COME IN.

Are you people that big a bunch of narcissists that you think you deserve this power? Or that they care about you at all? Fools. Tools. Useless inbred hicks.